A Tech and Gadgets story at MSNBC introduces DateChek by Intellius, a new service that will do a background check on a prospective suitor for a range of fees.
The issues raised by this “completely legal” snooping tool are several and include:
1) As Stephen Lichtenstein, professor of law at Bentley University in Waltham, Mass., states what can be legal might not necessarily be ethical: “Some things that are legal are not necessarily ethical, If somebody meets me in a bar and gives my information to some third party that I don’t know and they do a background check on me, even though it’s public information, why not at least contact me and say, ‘X has inquired about you and we’re going to do a background check.’ I do have a problem with this ethically.”
2) What happens if lots of people search for you using the DateCheck service? Would you automatically be listed as a sleeze – what other explanation could there be?
3) What if you intentionally don’t want to let potential partners know of your profession or family circumstances for a perfectly honest reason eg. you don’t want to attract someone who is targeting you in order to access your children, business or personal wealth.
4) Would this service encourage vigilantes to start using Dating Site information to find people that they can confront. You could easily imagine a search through an online dating site giving a false postive and identifying a member as a convicted paedophile (just because he has the same name as one). Would this open the completely innocent members up to being invited on a date with a pretend suitor only to be meet with an aggressive attacker seeking to administer justice?
5) The “$$$$” property ownership information check seems like the perfect data for potential suitor’s who have no other intention except for robbing you!
6) The “Interests” check that gleans information from various employment, education and social networking data could reduce your odds of making a good start with someone new. There is only a fine line between knowing everything about someone and stalking them so try not to take such a clinical approach to your personal life.
7) While John Arnold, co-founder and executive vice president of business development at Intelius (the producer of the new App), argues that DateCheck is more about leveling the playing field than putting tools into the hands of creeps. His claims that “The creeps are already armed up, they’re way ahead of the game. This is more of a way for consumers to fight back. This is an ‘in the moment’ application so when you meet someone and you’re away from home, you can make the decision to either engage or politely move on.”
Surely this statement undermines the benefits of the service, because if the creeps are “way ahead of the game” they aren’t going to be using their real names/email addresses but those of a fictitious name or impostering a genuine person who is rated “all ok” in order to give a false sense of security.
I hope I’m not giving the impression that I’m totally against the idea of checking out someone – infact I completely agree with Dan Nainan when he says: “There are two kinds of people — those who Google their dates and those who lie about it,”. But I do think people should be realistic about the value of these investigative services and the benefits they offer when you’ve just met and are getting to know someone new… this will never be a safe replacement for your own sense of judgement.
If you want to ensure that your personal data isn’t filling up databases at private detective companies you should make a beeline for the The 3G Dating Agency community which ensures your revealing personal data isn’t being mined and potentially abused.
